Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone (85 page)

“Certainement,”
Fergus agreed, and lifted his own glass to Roger. “You have brought home our prodigal. If you want to bathe in it, say the word.”

“Don't tempt me.” Roger took a long, slow sip and closed his eyes, his worn face relaxing wonderfully.

Bree hadn't drunk much wine since Amy Higgins's death; the smell of grapes reminded her too much of that day among the scuppernongs, and the color of red wine was too much the color of blood, fresh in the sunlight. Even so, this wine seemed not so much to be swallowed as to dissolve right through her membranes and into her own sweet blood, and she felt her body gradually soften, easing back into its natural shape as the tension of the trip left her.

They'd made it.

So far,
said the cynical back of her mind, but she ignored that. For the moment, everyone was safe—and together.

Germain hadn't gone to bed with Jem and Mandy and his sisters; he was curled up beside his mother on the settle, sound asleep with his head in her lap, and she smoothed a hand gently over his tousled blond head, with a look of such tenderness on her face that it smote Bree in the heart.

She touched her breastbone lightly at the thought, but everything was peaceful within, a soft, regular
THUMP-thump, THUMP-thump
that would lull her to sleep in moments, if she let it. A brief squawk from the cradle by Fergus's chair drove the notion of sleep out of her head, and she sat up quickly, a maternal surge rising straight up from belly to breasts with surprising force.

“If one goes, the other will, too,” Marsali said, sighing and reaching for her laces. “Hold my wine, will ye, Bree?”

She took the glass, warm from the fire and Marsali's hand, and watched, half enviously, as Fergus handed one swaddled bundle to his wife, then bent to pick the other baby up from the cradle.

“This one's wet,” he said, holding the little boy away from his body.

“I'll change him.” Bree put the wine on the table and took the bundle from Fergus, who released his son with alacrity and sat down again with his own glass, looking happy.

There were clean clouts and rags on a shelf, and a small tin of some sort of ointment that smelled of lavender, chamomile, and oatmeal. She smiled, recognizing a version of Mama's diaper-rash cream.

“Who do I have?” she asked, turning back the blanket to reveal a small, round, sleepy face and a slick of light-brown hair down the middle of the head.

“Charles-Claire,” said Fergus, and nodded at Marsali's bundle. “That's Alexandre.”

“Hello there,” she said softly, and the baby smacked his lips in a thoughtful sort of way and began to wiggle inside his wrappings.
“Comment ça va?”

“Wah!”

“Oh, not that good, eh? Well, let's see about it, then…”

TIRED AS THEY
were, nobody wanted to go to bed. Brianna could feel sleep gently creeping up from her tired feet and aching shins, over her knees like a warm quilt. But there was much to be said, and after a lot of catching up with the current state of things on the Ridge, plus the welfare of all the people and animals there, they reached an explanation of their presence in Charles Town.

“It was mostly Germain,” Roger said, smiling at the sleeping boy and then at Marsali. “Once he'd had your letter, of course we had to come. And, um”—he darted a quick glance at Bree—“I think Jamie said he'd sent you a note?”

That made Marsali look sharply at Fergus, who made an offhand “It's nothing” sort of gesture. Roger cleared his throat and continued. “But Charles Town is on the way, after all.”

“On the way where?” Fergus had relaxed into something like bonelessness, eyelids half shut against the smoke from the driftwood fire. Brianna thought she'd never seen him this way before—completely at peace.

“To Savannah,” Roger replied, with a touch of pride that warmed Brianna more than the fire. “Bree's got a commission—to paint the wife of a rich merchant named Brumby.”

One of Fergus's brows twitched up.

“Congratulations,
ma soeur.
Savannah…is this Monsieur Alfred Brumby?”

“Yes,” she said, surprised. “Do you know him? Or anything about him?”

“I see his name painted on any number of boxes and barrels on the wharves, as they pass from Savannah to Philadelphia and Boston. He's an importer of molasses from the West Indies. And
very
rich in consequence, I assure you. Charge him anything you like for his portrait; he won't blink.”

Brianna rolled a sip of wine around her mouth, enjoying the slight roughness on her tongue.

“Do I take it that ‘importer' is a polite name for ‘smuggler'?”

“Well, no more than half the time,” Fergus said, with a slight Gallic shrug. “It
is
still legal to import molasses into the colonies—but naturally, there is a tax for doing so. And where you have taxes…”

“You have smugglers,” Roger finished, and belched slightly. “Pardon me. So are you saying that Mr. Brumby is importing molasses
and
smuggling it?”

“Mais oui,”
Marsali said, laughing. “He pays his taxes on the barrels marked as molasses, and the barrels marked as salt fish or rice pass unremarked—and untaxed. So long as the inspector doesn't smell them…”

“And as Monsieur Brumby is shrewd enough to pay him off, he doesn't,” Fergus finished. He bent and fished about under the low table, coming out with another bottle, this one unlabeled. “Speaking of smells,” he said, squinting at Roger, “I do not wish to give offense by making personal remarks, but…”

“It's sauerkraut,” Brianna said apologetically. “Speaking of smuggling…” She cleared her throat discreetly. She'd been on edge throughout their journey, in constant fear of the barrels breaking, leaking, falling to the ground, or calling undue attention to themselves, but her father had—no surprise—been right: nobody wanted to get near them. And now, safely arrived, well fed, and half drunk, she was inclined to feel some pride in their success.

When Roger mentioned the amount of gold that Jamie had sent, Fergus pursed his lips in a soundless whistle, and he and Marsali exchanged a look, tinged with warning.

“Da knows it's dangerous,” Bree hastened to say. “He wouldn't want you to put yourselves in any danger. But if you—”

“Pfft,”
Fergus said, and pulled the cork. “In these times, there's little one can do that
isn't
dangerous. If I'm going to be killed for something, I should like it to be something that matters. If it's entertaining, so much the better.”

Bree, watching Marsali's face as he made this airy statement, thought that Marsali might have a few more private doubts, but she nodded, face sober.

“I'll help him,” Roger assured Marsali, seeing her reservations. “Nobody will suspect me of being an arms dealer. Or at least I hope they won't…”

“Roger's about to be fully ordained,” Bree said, seeing their puzzled looks, and felt her usual affection and pride, tinged with fear, when the matter of Roger's calling arose. “That's the other reason for us coming to Charles Town. He has to meet with a—er—presbytery of ministers here, so they can examine him and make sure he's still fit to be one.”

“And I'm sure that being caught in possession of three dozen guns stolen from the British navy will reassure them as to his moral character,” Fergus said, and laughed like a drain.

“The British
navy
?” Bree said, eyeing the collection of empty wine bottles on the table.

“Well, they're the only ones who probably have a lot of guns they aren't using all the time,” Marsali said, matching the Gallicness—
or should that be Gallicity,
Bree thought, her thoughts beginning to slur—of Fergus's shrug.

“And if not, we will find someone who has.” Fergus ceremoniously refilled all the cups, set down the bottle, and lifted his own drink.

“To liberty,
mes chers.
Sauerkraut and muskets!”

BRIANNA AND THE
kids slept like the dead, sprawled on the floor of the loft like victims of some sudden plague, fallen where they lay among the barrels of varnish and lampblack and the stacks of books and pamphlets. In spite of the long day, the emotional reunion, and the impressive amount of wine drunk, Roger found himself unwilling to fall asleep at once. Not unable; he could still feel the vibration of the wagon and the reins in his hands, and a sort of hypnosis lurked in the back of his mind, urging him to drop into a slow-moving swirl of rice paddies and circling birds, cobbled streets and tree leaves moving like smoke in the dusk. But he held back, wanting to keep this moment for as long as he could.

Destination. Destiny, if he could bring himself to think such a thing. Did normal people, ordinary people, have a destiny? It seemed immodest to think he did—but he was a minister of God; that was
exactly
what he believed: that every human soul had a destiny and had a duty to find and fulfill it. Just at this moment, he felt the weight of the precious trust he held, and wanted never to let go of the great sense of peace that filled him.

But the flesh is weak, and without his making any conscious decision to do so, he dissolved quietly into the night, the breath of his wife and his sleeping children, the damped fire below, and the sounds of the distant marshes.

Three days later…

ROGER’S APPOINTMENT TO MEET
with the Reverends Mr. Selverson, Thomas, and Ringquist, elders of the Presbytery of Charles Town, had been arranged for three o’clock in the afternoon. Plenty of time to do a few errands and brush his good black suit.

For the moment, though, he sat on the bench outside the printshop, enjoying the morning sun and savoring the aftertaste of breakfast. Brianna had made French toast, to accompany the normal parritch and ham, and while Fergus had declared that no Frenchman would ever have conceived such a dish, he’d admitted that it was delicious, rich and eggy and slathered with some of the honey Claire had sent from her hives. It went some way to compensate for the lack of tea or coffee; as an American-occupied city, Charles Town had little of either. On the other hand, there was fresh milk, taken in trade from a dairywoman with a taste for ballads and the lurid confessions of felons about to be hanged.

Roger had read several of the latter screeds that Fergus had set aside for his customer the night before and had been fascinated, mildly repelled—and made somewhat uneasy.

All you that come to see my fatal end

Unto my final words I pray attend

Let my misfortune now a warning be

To everyone of high or low degree.

A stack of these broadsides had been left on the breakfast table; he’d caught a glimpse of one headline as Germain had gathered them up and tapped the pages tidily into order before putting them in his bag:

No stranger to the excesses of the daily press—the things Fergus printed were in fact not that different in character or intent from the tabloid papers of his own time—he had been struck by one factor peculiar to this time: to wit, the fact that the condemned men (and the occasional woman) were always accompanied by a clergyman on their journey toward the gallows. Not just a private pre-execution visit to give prayers and comfort, but to climb Calvary alongside the condemned.

What would I say to him,
he wondered,
if I should find myself called to accompany a man to his execution?
He’d seen men killed, seen people die, certainly; much too often. But these were natural—if sometimes sudden and catastrophic—deaths. Surely it was different, a healthy man, sound of body, filled with life, and facing the imminent prospect of being deprived of that life by the decree of the state. Worse, having one’s death presented as a morally elevating public spectacle.

It struck Roger suddenly that he’d
been
publicly executed, and the milk and French toast shifted at the sudden memory.

Aye, well…so was Jesus, wasn’t He?
He didn’t know where that thought had come from—it felt like something Jamie would say, logical and reasonable—but it flooded him at once with unexpected feeling.

It was one thing to know Christ as God and Savior and all the other capital-letter things that went with that. It was another to realize with shocking clarity that, bar the nails, he knew exactly how Jesus of Nazareth had felt. Alone. Betrayed, terrified, wrenched away from those he loved, and wanting with every atom of one’s being to stay alive.

Well, now you know what you’d say to a condemned man on his way to the gallows, don’t you?

He was sitting there in the hot sunshine, trying to digest everything from French toast to the revelations of memory, when the printshop door opened beside him.

“Comment ça va?”
Fergus emerged with Germain and Jemmy in tow and raised an eyebrow at Roger, who hastily removed the hand still curled into his stomach.

“Fine,” he said, getting up. “Where are you off to this morning?”

“Germain is taking the papers and broadsheets to the taverns,” Fergus said, clapping his son on the back and smiling at him. “And if you agree, Jem will go with him. A great assistance, and one I have missed sorely,
mon fils,
” he said to his son. Germain blushed but looked pleased, and stood up straighter against the heavy weight of the canvas sack on his shoulder, filled with copies of
L’Oignon
and sheaves of broadsheets and handbills advertising everything from a ship captain’s desire for sailors to join a Profitable and Happy Voyage to Mexico to a list of the
Numerous Benefits of Dr. Hobart’s Famous Elixir, Guaranteed to Provide Relief
from a laundry list of complaints, beginning with Constipation and Swelling of the Ankles. Roger glimpsed
Inflammation of,
but the list of inflamed parts disappeared into the recesses of Germain’s bag, leaving Roger to imagine the extent of Dr. Hobart’s powers.

“Can I go, Dad?” Jem had a smaller bag on his shoulder and was pink with excitement, though trying very hard to be grown up and dignified about the job.

“Aye, of course.” Roger smiled at his son and swallowed all the words of warning and good advice that rose to his lips.

“Bonne chance, mes braves,”
Fergus wished the boys gravely, and Roger stood shoulder-to-shoulder with him, watching them stride firmly away, each with one arm wrapped protectively around his heavy bag to keep it from swinging. Jem, for all that he was taller than his cousin, was still a boy—but Germain seemed to have made one of those mysterious leaps by which children somehow alter themselves within the space of a night and rise up as a different version of themselves. The Germain of this morning was not grown up, but you could see the nascent young man beginning to emerge through his soft, fair skin.

Fergus sighed deeply, eyes fixed on his son as Germain disappeared around the corner.

“Good to have him back?” Roger asked.

“More than you can imagine,” Fergus said quietly. “Thank you for bringing him to us.”

Roger smiled, shrugging a little. Fergus smiled back, but then his gaze seemed to lengthen, looking over Roger’s shoulder. Roger turned to look, but the road was empty.

“When must you meet your inquisitors,
mon frère
?” he asked.

The word gave Roger a small qualm, but he didn’t think Fergus had used it in anything more than its most literal sense.

“Three o’clock,” he answered. “Is there something you’d like me to do in the meantime?”

Fergus looked him over carefully, but nodded, evidently finding his appearance in shirtsleeves, shabby waistcoat, and slightly worn breeches acceptable for whatever activity he had in mind.

“Come,” Fergus said, with a jerk of his head toward the distant water. “I may possibly have found milord’s guns. Bring a small amount of gold.”

He and Fergus had—with great care and a little help from Jem and Germain—decanted the sauerkraut into a variety of jars, bowls, and crocks in order to retrieve the gold—“Well, we dinna want to waste it, do we?” Marsali had said, reasonably—and hidden the gold in various places in the house. He stepped into the kitchen and abstracted a slip of gold from under a large and rather smelly cheese on top of the cupboard, hesitated for a moment, then took two more, just in case.

A BIG DANISH
Indiaman was engulfing its cargo at the foot of Tradd Street as they passed. Boxes of salt fish, huge hogsheads of tobacco, bales of raw cotton, and the odd trunk, wheelbarrow, or coop of feather-scattering chickens in between, all lurched up the narrow gangway on the backs of sweating, half-naked men, to disappear into the black mouth of an open hatchway with the sporadic, gulping greed of a boa constrictor swallowing rats.

The sight of it made Roger want suddenly to duck out of sight and hide in the warehouse behind them. He remembered too well what it felt like to do that—over and over and over and over, hands blistered to bleeding, the skin flayed from your shoulders, muscles burning and the smell of dead fish and tobacco enough to make your head swim under the hot sun. And he remembered the sardonic eyes of Stephen Bonnet, watching him do it.

“Tote that barge, lift that bale—get a little drunk and you land in jail,” Roger remarked to Fergus, trying to make light of the memory. Fergus squinted at the heaving, staggering procession and shrugged.

“Only if you get caught.”

“Have you ever
been
caught?”

Fergus glanced casually at the hook he wore in replacement of his missing left hand.

“Not for stealing bales,
non.
”

“What about guns?”

“Not for stealing
anything,
” Fergus replied loftily. “Come, we want Prioleau’s Wharf; that’s where he berths.”

“He?” Roger asked, but Fergus was already halfway down the narrow street and he was compelled to walk fast to catch up.

Prioleau’s Wharf was a long, thin quay, and very busy, mostly with small boats tying up to unload fish—the city’s fish market was near at hand, and they were compelled to dodge small wagons and handcarts piled with gleaming silver bodies—some of them still flapping in a last desperate denial of death. The air was thick and humid, the smell of fresh fish and fish blood visceral and exciting, and Roger’s memories of the
Gloriana
’s and the
Constance
’s dank holds faded.

Fergus had dropped into a casual stroll and Roger did the same, looking to and fro—though he had no idea who or what they were looking for.

“Bonjour, mon ami!”
Fergus hailed friends and acquaintances all the way down the wharf—he appeared to know everyone, and many of the men he greeted waved or called back, though few stopped working. He was talking in English, French—though French of a
patois
that Roger scarcely understood—and something that might be some Creole tongue, which he understood even less. He did gather, though, that they were in search of a man named Faucette.

Shakes of the head greeted Fergus’s questions, for the most part, but one squat black gentleman, nearly as broad as he was tall, paused in the act of gutting a fish—still alive and flapping—and replied in the affirmative, judging from his gestures, which ended in his pointing out to sea with his bloody knife.

“There he is.” Fergus waved his thanks to the fisherman and, taking Roger’s elbow, steered him farther down the pier.

The
“he”
in question was a small, nimble-looking boat with a single sail that had just appeared from the far side of Marsh Island.

It was a fishing boat, bringing in its catch—a single fish, but a fish that caused everyone nearby to drop what they were doing and rush to see it as soon as the boat lowered its sail and drifted alongside the wharf.

It was an enormous shark—quite dead, thank God—and longer than the boat; the great gray body buckled in the middle, head and tail protruding over prow and stern, the dreadful head—for it was a hammerhead shark—goggling like some horrible figurehead. The boat rode so low in the water that the wavelets from the quay lapped over the sides from time to time. The crew—there were only two men, one black, one of mixed race—were swarmed, both by gapers and by fishmongers bent on acquiring the prize.

“Well, this will take some little while,” Fergus remarked, displeased at the hubbub. “On the other hand, it will perhaps render Monsieur Faucette communicative—if he’s not too drunk to talk by the time I am able to get him alone.” He exhaled audibly through his nose, thinking, then glanced at the sun and shook his head.

“It will be hours. You’ll have to go, if you are to have time to change your clothes before you meet the press-biters.”

“The—oh, aye,” Roger said, hiding a smile. After all, what else would you call the members of a presbytery? “Well, then…” He reached into his waistcoat pocket and withdrew a folded handkerchief, concealing the gold slips inside it. “
Gesundheit.
Er…I mean,
À vos souhaits
.”

“À tes amours,”
Fergus replied politely, delicately wiped his nose and tucked the handkerchief into his pocket.
“Bonne chance, mon frère.”